فَلَآ أُقْسِمُ بِٱلْخُنَّسِ ٱلْجَوَارِ ٱلْكُنَّسِ
Fa-lā uqsimu bi'l-khunnas Al-jawāri'l-kunnas "I swear by those that withdraw — that run their course, that go into their lairs."
How widespread this pattern is in the Qurʾān, and the grammatical dispute over it, were treated in tabular form in the section on al-Balad 90/1; this verse appears in the list there. I do not repeat it here.
In the other places the pattern is mostly lā uqsimu or wa lā uqsimu. Here there is a fāʾ: fa-lā uqsimu.
In Arabic the fāʾ conveys consequence and connection. The oath, then, is not a new beginning; it is the consequence of the preceding fourteen verses. "Since it is to be so — then I swear that…"
This is the grammatical tie that binds the two halves together. The sūra is not changing its subject; it moves to taking up the same subject from the other end.
Root: خ-ن-س. This root was treated in the section on al-Nās 114/4 (al-khannās), and this verse was mentioned there; I do not repeat it here. In summary: the concrete sense of the root is to draw back, to shrink away, to hide, to withdraw and vanish. Khanas — the nose being set back; al-Khansāʾ — the name of a pre-Islamic poet, from the same root.
الخُنَّس is the plural of khānis and is on the pattern فُعَّل — the plural of the active participle, conveying continuity and multiplicity.
The al-khannās of Sūrat al-Nās, by contrast, was on the pattern فَعَّال — the intensive form. Two different patterns, one root: the one "constantly shrinking away" (the satan), the other "those that withdraw and vanish" (the stars).
The Qurʾān uses this word of ships as well: "His are the running ships, raised up like mountains upon the sea" (al-Raḥmān 55/24: al-jawāri'l-munshaʾāt). The same word.
1. كَنَسَ — to sweep. Kanasa'l-bayta — he swept the house. Miknasa — a broom. 2. كِنَاس — the lair of the gazelle and of the wild animal in the thicket, its shelter. كَانِس — the one that goes into its lair.
How do the two join? The lexicographers explain kinās as "the hollow the animal opens for itself by sweeping" — the lair, that is, is a cleared hollow. The idea beneath the root: to open a place and to go into it.
كُنَّس, like al-khunnas, is on the fuʿʿal pattern; both are on the same pattern and end on the same sound.
| Word | What it does |
|---|---|
| الخُنَّس | Draws back, shrinks away, vanishes |
| الجَوَارِ | Runs, advances, makes its way |
| الكُنَّس | Goes into its lair, hides |
| View | Ground | Assessment |
|---|---|---|
| The stars (in general) | They are visible by night and vanish by day. Khunnas — those that draw back; kunnas — those that vanish | The common view. Simple and consistent |
| The planets — the five planets visible to the naked eye | As they advance across the sky they slow for a while, appear to be going backwards, then advance again. This answers to all three words exactly: withdrawing, advancing, vanishing | Frequently mentioned in the classical commentaries. It finds a counterpart for all three words |
| Gazelles / wild oxen | The proper use of the word kinās is an animal's lair. The next verse speaks of the night and the morning; the animal image fits that tableau as well | A minority view; but strong on the linguistic side |
The attraction of the second view is real: the "appearing to go backwards" of heavenly bodies is a phenomenon visible to the naked eye, and requires no knowledge of modern astronomy. An observer who watches the sky over weeks notices it; it is known that this movement was recorded in the older traditions of observation.
But this cannot be said: "This verse is announcing the orbital motion of the planets." It cannot be said, because:
- The verse describes an appearance, not a mechanism. The words name what the observer sees.
- The classical exegetes drew this interpretation not from any astronomical knowledge but from the lexical sense of the words.
- And the verse's function is not to give information; it is to swear an oath. The things sworn by are things the hearer knows — one does not swear by something he does not know.
Per the method (Method), no forced connection with natural science is made in this commentary. What can be recorded is this: the three words name a behaviour seen in the sky — appearing, advancing, vanishing — with three separate verbs; and the description fits what is seen with the naked eye.
And the report that follows is about a message that comes from an unseen source. The twenty-fourth verse will say al-ghayb (the unseen) outright.
The sūra, that is, swears by things that hide and come back into view, and so defends the truth of a report that comes from what is hidden.
I record this connection as my own reading. But that the Qurʾān's oaths are generally related to their subjects has been observed in other sections of this commentary as well — night and day in al-Ḍuḥā, coming to light in al-Shams, splitting open in al-Falaq.